Tomato sauce

Uf, what a day! I came from Ljubljana to Straža with a goal to cook tomato sauce for whole family. I put on a dress I bough in a second-hand market in Jordan with a purpose to wear it ‘when cooking jams’ and brought all of the ingredients and tools to our terrace that turns into summer kitchen with a help of gas cooker. And the party began!

Jan was peeling the onion and took care that the can of radler became empty asap. We managed somehow to do homemade potato gnocchi with creamy sauce meanwhile. Mum and dad joined after their work. And we were filling cups and bottles and put them safely under blankets. Since I have experience with cooking tomato sauce since high-school I can really confidently say that this years it’s the best. I think it will be gone till march  #tomatosauceislife

If you think that this post will be a recipe you are very wrong my friend. I had more than 40 kg of tomatoes to work with. There was no chance I would have the time to weigh and note down all the ingredients. The cooking was very much based on the feeling and usually that’s how good things happen. And the really did – we managed to cook four different sauces that you can find described below photos. I hope they will serve you as an inspiration and you are going to make at least that much of tomato sauce 🙂 

The first sauce: The simple tomato one. I only halved the tomatoes and cooked them for 15 minutes. The I let them cool down. After a while I peeled them and put back on the fire and cook until it became thick enough. I also added salt and brown sugar. At the end I blended everything with a hand blender. I have never made a sauce like this but Klemen’s mum has been giving it to us all winter and I think it’s like drug to us. We put it literally everywhere 🙂

For the second sauce Jan had to peel 5 kg of onion.

Potatoes for gnocchi.

The second sauce was the improvised version of tomato sauce I’ve been doing for years. I used around 2 dl of olive oil and sauted around 4.5 kg of chopped onion on it. Then I added roughly chopped tomatoes (30 kg) and let it cook for a while. I also added a lot of basil, rosemary, parsley, sage and bay leaves. Some white wine also. Salt and brown sugar to the taste. When it was nicely cooked my dad mashed everything trough a strainer so the result was a beautiful homogeneous sauce. In previous years I didn’t do this so I had to cut the tomatoes a bit finely + the tomato skins are not something to be happy about.

The third sauce was a mix of tomatoes (around 5 kg) and different types of chillies that Jan randomly picked on our garden. I cooked it for a very long time so the result was pretty thick (as you can see on the photo below). While cooking I also added white wine and vinegar and spiced it with salt, brown sugar and honey. When it was cooked I blended it with hand blender and strained. 

And a funny story – my mum cooked lunch in the same pot the next day. According to her texts they had a VERY spicy lunch.

How do you bring mason jars from the basement?

The fourth sauce is the left one on the photo, in the big jar. My mum prepared it by the principle ‘clean the garden’. She sauted some onion, added tomatoes, after around half an hour bell peppers and zucchinis. At the end she also added lots of parsley and basil. Some salt and brown sugar. Basically this is an improvised satarash. 

_Our pantry is now richer for quite some jars. How do you cook tomato sauces? _